This video illustrates how Curitiba’s public transportation system
operates and the urban planning and land use principles on which it is
based, including an interview with the former Mayor and architect Jaime
Lerner. Current city employees also discuss the improvements that are
being made to the system to keep it up to date and functioning at the
capacity of a typical subway system. Curitiba is currently
experimenting with adding bypassing lanes on the dedicated BRT routes
and smart traffic lights to prioritize buses. They are even
constructing a new line which will have a linear park and 18km of bike
lane that parallels the bus transit route.

Curitiba’s “super buses” used dedicated right-of-ways a la the Orange Line. That alone makes the concept not viable for Pico/Olympic.

Year ago when Robert Scheer was a columnist for the L.A. Times he had a piece extolling the Curitiba system. And got e-mails from Brazil, Curitiba residents who use the service voicing complaints–rough rides, crazy drivers, crowded buses. You notice it is technocrats and experts who gush over this. When the people who use it had a chance to be heard, Scheer heard of the downside we policy wonks had been hearing whispered about for years.

Plus to make it work Curitiba densified the corridors it runs along. Imagine trying to do that in our NIMBY political atmosphere.

I’ve heard Mayor Penalosa speak before and he did a wonderful thing for Curtiba. The NIMBY’s in Curtiba fought this system. In particular, the small number of wealthy residents resented giving up parking spaces right in front of the stores they shopped at.

This will never work in Los Angeles by itself without some rail as well. The NIMBYs and automotive-entitled will never give up the lanes of traffic and parking spaces necessary to implement this across the city.

It would be interesting to see what right-of-ways Metro still owns where this could be implemented in part. For example, what about running the 4/704/14/16/316 buses in Beverly Hills on the ROW after rebuilding the parking structures? That ROW is currently unused since the Santa Monica Blvd. line will shoot down to the Beverly Center instead of straight down Santa Monica.

I’d love to see streetcars all over town running on transit-only lanes which also allow buses. But that’s another issue.

As it is, the Orange Line is at capacity now, and just watch what happens when those Wilshire Bus Only lanes go into effect (assuming they ever do).

I support the idea, but the political firestorm before, during and after implementation will be fierce – especially when motorists in their single-occupancy vehicles are sitting in traffic longer, resenting the bus-only lanes, and the rapid buses weaving in and out of those lanes into the remaining non-bus-only lanes in order to pass local buses. The prior Bus-only lanes in Brentwood lasted all of 30 minutes it seems.

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